AI and machine learning things are moving right along. A few months ago, in a Celent report, I predicted the emergence of a “Natural Best Friend,” a term combining “natural language” and “best friends forever.” However, there is nothing organic about the Natural Best Friend; it is completely a product of technology. The Natural Best Friend will at some point pass the Turing Test (interacting with a person in a way that is indistinguishable from how another person would interact). Natural Best Friends will become sources of not only trusted information and advice, but also of companionship, friendship, and perhaps even some form of wisdom and intimacy. The use of the Natural Best Friend has obvious applications in throughout the entire insurance life cycle: from underwriting to service to claims. Even the possible characteristics of companionship, friendship, wisdom, and intimacy may be of use to insurers. Consider insurers’ brands, built over decades, which stand for trust, reliability, and succor. Once it becomes socially normal to have a personal relationship with the Natural Best Friend, insurers’ (and many other service industries') sales and service processes will change dramatically. IBM has just announced it is developing customer service software that can interpret the customer’s emotional state by the content and pattern of the customer’s chat messages. Somewhere in the future, the software may be able to analyze a customer’s voice to determine the emotional playing field. Here’s a link to the WSJ story (warning: this might be behind a paywall). The family tree that will produce a baby boom of Natural Best Friends now has a new branch.